Do you need legal advice?

Posted on Oct 9, 2007

Splashpress is pleased to announce that it is offering another free service for bloggers- legal advice on your blogs, especially focusing on the area of plagiarism, content theft/scraping and DMCAs. This is being provided via a dedicated forum on Performancing and being run by Jonathan Bailey of Plagiarism Today, who also writes on these matters at the Blog Herald.

Performancing is happy to announce a forum dedicated to legal issues that bloggers face. In addition to stock DMCA notices and cease and desist letters, Jonathan Bailey from Plagiarism Today will be offering advice and conducting research into specific issues.

The forum will focus primarily on content theft, but also other issues that a blogger may face including, defamation, trademark, free speech issues, privacy and more. If Jonathan does not know the answer he will research it for you and provide an opinion.

We hope that this resource proves to be helpful to the blogging community, especially as many of us are “on our own” so to speak without the standard legal resources that an incorporated business might have.

Though I am not a lawyer and nothing I say is to be taken as legal advice, I am very knowledgeable about many legal issues that face bloggers.

However, I am here especially to help with any content theft or plagiarism issues you’ve encountered. If you’ve encounter someone using your content without permission, say a scraper or a plagiarist, feel free to post the details of the incident in a new post and I will be very happy to help you resolve the matter.

I will, as needed, research the matter, determine what is likely the best course of action and locate all of the information necessary to follow through.

Soon, to this forum, I will be posting stock DMCA notices and cease and desist letters to help with that process.

In addition to content theft, this forum will deal with other copyright issues including licensing, fair use and others that might arise over the course of creating and running a blog. If you have questions regarding any of those areas, especially with specific cases, feel free to place them in a new post and I will gladly look at them as well.

But this forum is not to be limited to just copyright issues, but to any issues that a blogger may face including, potentially, defamation, trademark, free speech issues, privacy and more. If I do not know the answer, and on non-copyright or mass media law topics that is very possible, I will research it for you or ask one of my colleagues for their opinion.

The end goal is to make this forum a one-stop shop for legal questions and answers related to blogging and a centralized place to discuss the issues that matter the most to us.

So please, feel free to add your thoughts and comments to this and, if you have an ongoing problem with content theft, post it into a new topic and I will see what I can do for you.

I am here to help in any way that I can.

Jonathan also has listed a series of stock letters which users may find useful.

The initial response to this free service has been huge, with Jonathan taking on 18 cases in September alone! So if you have any legal questions in regards to your blog, head on over to the legal section at the Performancing forums.